Love – Ayya Khema

I could not have worded it any better. So here it is, I’d like to share with you.

So we’ll have a look at it and see what the Buddha actually meant when he talked about love. He talked about it on many occasions, and this emotion underlies all his teaching. He was enlightened at the age of thirty-five, which means there was nothing left that he had to do. Yet he taught every single day of his life until he was on his deathbed at the age of eighty. Why? For the simple reason that he had so much love and compassion for the suffering that everybody experiences that he wanted to share his understanding which can alleviate and eliminate all that suffering. So underlying the teaching is always love as the foundation, whether he talked about it or not. We’ll have a look at what he actually explained it to be.

Instead of "lovingkindness," we can call it "unconditional love," which is probably a more succinct statement of what it is all about. When we have a look at the kind of emotion that we already have discussed — which is always connected with attachment — we can see quite easily that, if this is really love, we are diminished by it. Because what we’re doing is looking at only one, two, three people — and that’s the whole extent of love. There are six billion of us, so why diminish ourselves to one, two, or three? And not only that, the whole problem lies in the fact that because it is attachment, we’ve got to *keep* those one, two, or three in order to experience any kind of love. We are afraid to lose them: to lose them through death, through change of mind, to leaving home, to whatever change happens. And that fear discolors our love to the point where it can no longer be pure, because it is hanging on.

Now fear is always connected to hate. It doesn’t mean that we hate those people, those one, two, or three, or four, or five, or how many there happen to be in the house, it means that we hate the idea that we could be losing them. So there’s never that kind of open-hearted giving, without any demand behind it that a certain person is also there to receive it. Therefore it’s always dependent, and as long as we are dependent, we’re not free. This kind of love is doomed from the beginning and we all know that. We can change that kind of attachment to something else, but most people do not have that ability. Some people do, they manage; but it’s a rare case.

Actually, love is something entirely different. Just like intelligence is a quality of the mind, so love is a quality of the heart. We don’t just have intelligence when we have to solve a difficult mathematical equation; we don’t just have intelligence when we have to make logical connections; the mind remains intelligent whether we do that or not. It’s the same with love. The loving quality of the heart remains with us whether there’s anybody in front of us that we can actually extend that love to or not. That quality of the heart needs to be cultivated.

The intelligence of the mind is cultivated in our society from the time we can understand what our parents are saying. Certainly in all our learning institutions, from kindergarten on upward through university and post-graduate studies, it’s always the quality of the mind that is being cultivated. It’s highly prized, usually gets paid quite well, and also has a certain possibility for fame and acclaim. Very few if any institutions in the world teach the quality of the heart: love. We’ve got to learn it by ourselves. Very few people can even demonstrate it, never mind teach it. We don’t have kindergarten for it, nor do we have high school, graduate or post-graduate studies in love. This type of training is not available at any price. And yet, it has made people very famous — but it doesn’t pay in the coin of the realm. So that’s probably the rub. But once we have seen that materiality and all of the worldly things that we concern ourselves with actually cannot be fulfilling, then it stands to reason that we have to look elsewhere. And this is one of the directions in which we *must* look.

We all have the loving quality within us. There’s no doubt about it. Nobody is exempt. But we’ve done all sorts of things to it. I’ve mentioned a few already. We were disappointed that the one we picked out didn’t love us back, so we decided we’re not going love anybody. Or, somebody that we thought was trustworthy betrayed that trust, so we decide we’re not going to love. That decision is made in the mind; it’s not made in the heart — all decisions are made in the mind. But when that decision is made in the mind, we are able to close up our heart, and when we do that, we’re only half alive. Why do that to ourselves? We’re making ourselves dependent again on the good will and the lovingness of other people. There’s only one thing to depend on: upon our own goodness and our own lovingness. We’ve got enough work to do to get that going, never mind what others do. We’re constantly — through our reactions — buying into the actions and thoughts and deeds of other people. What for? There’s no need for that; we’ve got enough to do with ourselves.

By buying into other people’s thoughts and speech and actions, we also do not leave enough room for introspection. We’re too busy looking at what others are doing to us which is totally irrelevant. They can only do it to us if we allow them to do it to us. If we don’t allow it, what can they possibly do? If somebody gets angry at us and we feel upset by that, we’ve allowed that person to enter into our own being. If we see that the anger belongs to the other person, all we need is compassion for that person’s anger. That’s all that’s necessary.

If we really want to know what love is all about, we need to recognize that love is not dependent upon another person being lovable. If we want to find somebody who is totally and utterly lovable, we have to find an arahant, an enlightened person. And since we ourselves are not enlightened, we wouldn’t recognize such a person. We can only recognize what we know about ourselves. That’s all. When somebody comes into the room who is quite angry — doesn’t say anything, is just angry — we recognize that immediately because we’ve been angry ourselves. But if somebody comes into the room, doesn’t say anything (or might even say something), and is fully enlightened, we wouldn’t have a clue. How would we know? They don’t wear badges; they don’t have any halos or anything. So a fully and totally lovable person is not really within our realm. Are we ourselves totally and completely lovable? So, to look for that is a lost cause, and also it makes life very difficult because we’re looking for something outside of ourselves before we are willing to extend love.

To look for people who would like to be loved by us is also silly, because love is the kind of emotion which connects people with each other, and there’s no one exempt. Everybody would like to have a loving relationship with another person. But what we’re mostly looking for is somebody who loves us, and that’s the most absurd thing in the world to do, because that love belongs to the other person. The only reason we like it so much is because it proves something. It proves that we are actually lovable, all indications to the contrary. And since that is the best ego-support we can find, that’s what we’re looking for. It’s totally useless on the spiritual path, and if we’re looking for that, we may be disappointed, we may not find anybody. That’s the first thing that may happen. We may actually find somebody, but what good will that do us? The love is in the other person’s heart. We may deign to return it of course, but then again we’re dependent upon the fact that the other person keeps on loving. And then if the other person decides that they don’t want to keep on loving, then all of a sudden that’s a tragedy: we’re no longer lovable.

That’s the whole business of the one-to-one relationship in a nutshell. I mean, we all know that it doesn’t work, but why don’t we change our approach to the whole matter? Well, the reason for that is of course quite simple. We really need a spiritual genius like the Buddha to show us the way. There are very few people in the world who have that kind of ability to find the way by themselves. There are always some, but very very few. Most of us need to be shown the way.

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